Saturday, March 21, 2009

Tibo's & Paas-cache

Beautyfull weather today! We set out for "Tibo's Cache" not far from where we did the last multi, just down the road as a matter of fact.

Magnificient walk thru forests, along ponds and lakes with plenty of variety and interesting sights. Never expected to find a bunker there. Little wooden bridges, babbling brook and lots of empty woods (we started a bit before noon).

Found all the info and all the waypoints without too much trouble, but not the cache.
After 45 minutes we called it quits and headed home not before enjoying a lovely icecream from the vendor who had parked his van near the parking. Happy end afterall :-)

Tibo's Cache is a must if you like walking in the woods and along ponds. Winter or early spring is the best time i think : minimal musquito activity!

Its very easy to include Paascache multi in this multi.

I had received several pathtags from Australia and USA that needed to be set free in the wild and I have been carrying TB Little Red Book for a few weeks now, all of them where to be dropped in Tibo's Cache, but they will be dropped soon. Maybe tomorrow, weather permitting.

Found it 3/21/2009 Guinness70 found Paascache (Multi-cache) Limburg [visit log]
Didn't find it 3/21/2009 Guinness70 couldn't find Tibo's Cache (Multi-cache) Limburg [visit log]

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Activated some coins

Fear No Cache

Tribute to Lucilinburhuc

and this Happy Anniversary Geocoin, with a fun mission. Let's see how it goes.

If you retrieve or drop this coin on a birthday or a geocaching anniversary of you or someone in your party I will send you a present.
    However, there are a few requirements.
  1. post a picture of the celebrations at the cache (find or drop) : funny hats, drinks, cake ...
    This picture will be used as the default image of this coin, until the next submission.
  2. you cannot hold on to the coin more then 30 days
  3. of course this requires you providing an adress to send the present to.
In the spirit of caching I will take your word if you claim the birthday option, feel free to provide proof.
If it is a geocaching anniversary, milestone find or coin/TB move I can check your profile.

I'm open to suggestions for cunning plans or if you want to surprise someone having a geocaching related anniversary or milestone event, for example send a picture to be used as default picture before the person logs this coin.

And the winning streak continues ...

won 4 more coin auctions. DAMN... I'm gonna quit with those low ball bids! I'm winning all of them.
One coin for €4.25 and another for €6.00 (postage not inc).
thats 2 more coins to be set free or preferably sold.

I have another 13bids in ... luckly already 3 overbids ... here's me hoping for more overbids!

o_O

I bid low on some coins with the idea :"if i get it for that price... why not", but it gets expensive if you put down 20 of those bids and win them all.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

What happened on Ebay ?


I had bid on several geocoins, a few i really wanted (so i bid high) and several I wouldnt mind releasing in the wild, so I bid low.

Usually I loose, but not today. I dont know what happened but I have won nearly every auction.
DOH! This morning I had a bill of $100 to pay.

What happened? LOL

Also 2 coins in my mailbox today. One 2006 CITO coin and one birthday present coin which will be leaving on a special mission.

So now there are a couple of coins I am expecting in the mail:
Fear no Cache (see image), really wanted this one.
WMA Wear your orange vest (to set free)
Birka foggy silver
Red Rememberence Poppy (will be set free)
Carpe Diem
2007 Pirate Treasure (will be set free)
Flip Flops - Hibiscus version
Birthday Gift geocoin (will get a fun mission)
2006 CITO coin

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Two multis, short but gems!

Back to straightforward caching.

Two short walks (2.5km and 3.5km) but totally worth it. Lovely scenery, these must be AMAZING when nature blooms... we should have waited till may.

Dropped the Happy Cow tb after making a new tag for it also dropped some pathtags today.

Found it 3/15/2009 Guinness70 found De Brèk van Godske (Multi-cache) Limburg [visit log]
Found it 3/15/2009 Guinness70 found "De Dijken" (Multi-cache) Limburg [visit log]
Dropped off 3/15/2009 Guinness70 placed Happy Cow (Travel Bug Dog Tag) in "De Dijken" Limburg [visit log]
Retrieve it from a cache 3/15/2009 Guinness70 retrieved Rothaarsteig (Travel Bug Dog Tag) from "De Dijken" Limburg [visit log]
Dropped off 3/15/2009 Guinness70 placed Proving Trail Geocoin Heimon (Proving Trail Geocoin) in De Brèk van Godske Limburg [visit log]
Dropped off 3/15/2009 Guinness70 placed Rothaarsteig (Travel Bug Dog Tag) in De TB Pauze E313 Exit32 Limburg [visit log]
Discovered it 3/15/2009 Guinness70 discovered The road to Berlin! (Dutch Geocoin)
[visit log]
Dropped off 3/13/2009 Guinness70 placed Map@Syst Geocoin- Tongeren, Belgium (Map@Syst Geocoin) in Dodecaëder Limburg [visit log]
Write note 3/13/2009 Guinness70 posted a note for Delfts Blauw Geocoin (Delfts Blauw Geocoin)
[visit log]

Thursday, March 12, 2009

WW6 The longest GeoDay

that was an amazing experience!
the setup was brilliant. 300+ people doing the same thing differently.
4 zones with 2 battlefields each, all with WW2 theme.

the battlefield plans, with a flagged soldier for each team.

we were in Zone1 and did both battlefields. our goal was to identify and find a paratrooper who got seperated from his team after the plane got shot down.

and after a report by the resistance who informed us that a V2 had crashed in the woods without exploding we had to find and difuse the flying bomb.
how's that for a cache theme...

and we found the parachute
we found the V2 and our puzzler diffused the V2
also this call for "artillery" help. to get heading and distance.

in the evening there was an air raid, the radar was tracking an airplane which we identified and took down.
there were pictures of WW2 planes hanging in the trees and the radar was a engineering laser level and its laser would flash on only one of the planes. thats the one you needed.

after the end of the war we had to plant our flag at the point where the borders of 3 countries touched.

BLOODY AMAZING.

after all this there was a briefing explaining all the waypoints.
first thing the speaker says :"looks like we succeeded in tricking and misguiding you"
WHAT THE HELL? was that the goal of this exercise...he continued showing that at nearly each waypoint 3 items where hidden with info on it, 2 "easy to find" with wrong info and 1 "hard to find" with the correct info.

at one point you had to follow a trail of 9mm shells upto the .50 shell, ok for people who know about calibers. but it gets better.
so we find all the 9mms then a .45 ...meh, prolly ran out of 9mm
and at the back of the tree is the .50 shell with the info.
turns out that .45 was a decoy and THAT .50 gave wrong info. we should have stayed away from the .45 and looked for more 9mms.

at the crash site were 2 transparents with dots which -if held correctly- showed a picture and a code... which turns out to be totally irrelevant and just a decoy... where LOTS of people waisted about 45mins trying to figure out how to hold the slides to see the image. BS

at the parachute site: the parachute had a number on it. WRONG NUMBER across of the parachute in a treestump was a tag with the correct number.

found a prac grenade with H=12 stamped on the bottom.
the text ends with "carefull it doesnt explode" ... for some reason i dismantle it and on the detonator you can just distinguish H=2... so 2 or 12?

anyway, 10mintues down the "HAHAH!! FOOLED YOU" speech i packed my bags and headed home.
good thing we didnt get that speech before the event coz i if at every waypoint i had to think "how are they gonna F with us now" it would not have been a fun day caching in the woods.
and I enjoyed walking inthose woods A LOT! not every day you can hike alla cross a military training ground.
walked point for most of it (dont like puzzling, so might as well do my bit for the team)... leading the team straight thru the woods and bushes...LOL ... at one point i said "we'll follow this path and then the next path to the right" and the lady solving all the puzzles said "OH MY GOD!n he actually used the word "path"... TWICE! in one sentence!!" ... LOL
so i started using the paths a bit more :roll:

met several military folks. they all received a pathtag ... thank you asphaltking and germarican. they were all surprised to get a gift Smile love that feeling.

and the airborne MAGC coin could not have been more approriate for the event! one of the hints was the "airborne" scarf needed to identify the lost trooper.
showed the coin and passed on to joske, also military.

the trail also lead us to a commemoraiton site where flemmish resistance members were executed in the woods.

Friday, March 06, 2009

Germaricans Traveling MAGC Airborne Coin

Thanks to Germaricans the MAGC coin arrived just in time for the event tomorrow!
MACG stands for Military Association of GeoCachers .

Germaricans Traveling MAGC Airborne Coin

Owner: Germaricans
Released: Saturday, January 24, 2009
Origin: Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany
Use TB21WYW to reference this item.

march 07th, 2009 : WW6 event

Will Attend 3/4/2009 Guinness70 will attend WW6 event (Event Cache)

And each team shoul have at least :
- GPS
- flash light
- spare batteries
- 1 gamel (typical military frying pan) per team
- compass
- measuring rule
- 1 stamp pad per team
- binoculars
- little portable FM radio !NEW
??

Monday, March 02, 2009

Lovely walks today


Today we had an appointment at UZ Gasthuisberg, an hour before leaving from home a colleague calls with "an emergency". His missus wanted to go shopping but he didnt so she came up with a compromise : "the girls go shopping in Leuven and the men go walkabout/caching".

Excellent idea... I picked 3 caches around Leuven and we set off.

After the appointment at the hospital we met up and girls headed to Leuven and we started caching.
Started with Holle Wegen cache and it was brilliant! At one point we forgot to count the concrete posts, one data missing... plotted some possibles and went to check 2 of em but didnt find the micro so added 2km to the walk by going back to check the posts. Neither cared because its a great place!
"doh! its back at the location where we didnt find the micro"

Dirk started searching at the coords but I searched 10m earlier and found the micro, ON TO THE NEXT POINT. What a great path!! Gotta love this!
At the next micro the coords were again 5-10m off but logic prevails :-)
The last stretch was again brilliant! Loved this one to bits! With the oversight we accumulated 7.5km.


On to the next cache : Het Bed van Napoleon . Ow man! Great scenery, thru the woods, passing by HUGE houses. More woods, more muddy paths... EXCELLENT! This one was even better then the first one.
Make sure to get the data at the chapel BEFORE diving into the hell! Its a long and steap walk back! Luckly Dirk remembered it right in time!
We first missed the intended path to the right but when we saw the road we turned back and found the path to the next point.
More great paths into the woods with lovely scenery upto the cache. Found it! Back to the car with 6.5km on the clock.
BRILLIANT ! absolutely brilliant!

Big thanks to Juliette for coming up with the great compromise!

Found it 3/2/2009 Guinness70 found HET BED VAN NAPOLEON (HAGELAND) (Multi-cache) Vlaams-Brabant [visit log]
Found it 3/2/2009 Guinness70 found Holle wegen Cache (Multi-cache) Vlaams-Brabant [visit log]

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Kom eens kijken bij het GeoCaching Weekend

Event Cache Kom eens kijken bij het GeoCaching Weekend
An Event cache by Apiedi@k Event Date: 2/28/2009

Reyger told me about this event in Valkenswaard and asked if I felt like going. So today at 0930 we headed north, first picking up some TBs on the way up.

At the event there were MANY TBs and coins to discover. I have never seen so many.
The cache itself was brief but fun, walking along a motorcross circuit :-) nice touch.

Also met some - upto now- virtual friends : De Jakke, Geo.Error and Cache-Hopper. De Jakke I know from GCB and facebook. Geo.Error had a race coin I moved to Germany and I found a card from Cache-Hopper a few months ago and he was also at this event! Talk about coincidence!!!

Then the TBs and coins ... OH MY GOD! So many I hadnt seen before! Those suncatchers are stunning! Two cachers had a complete album with a hundred coins and they handed out a list with the tracking codes of these coins...
Its going to take me a while to log all those discoveries. My Nocturnal coin and the For the love of caching coin was very popular also. One guy saw it and immediately went on the internet and bought one. :-)
I wont be adding the discovery listing... that would probably not fit here.

After the event we headed back south but first we went for Het Achel's Dozijn, sadly there was a bicycle race and all the roads to the caches were blocked so we did some other caches.

It was a great day! Thank you Reyger!

Found it Guinness70 found Memorial Rock (Traditional Cache) Limburg [visit log]
Found it Guinness70 found KB Spotterscorner1 (Traditional Cache) Limburg [visit log]
Found it Guinness70 found Noord-Zuid Motel (Traditional Cache) Limburg [visit log]
Found it Guinness70 found Duurzame energie uit vervlogen tijden 3 (Traditional Cache) Limburg [visit log]
Found it Guinness70 found Duurzame energie uit vervlogen tijden 2 (Traditional Cache) Limburg [visit log]
Found it Guinness70 found Duurzame energie uit vervlogen tijden 1 (Traditional Cache) Limburg [visit log]

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Terrible caching day

Nice sunny but be it windy and chilly day and Edith suggested we go caching. We set out for Mooshoek. They are family of Zwanske, whos' multis are all great, so expectations were high.

On the way there I noticed that the initial coords and the coords of WP0 (=parking and location of first tag) are different. odd...

Parked at the WP0/parking coordinates and started looking for the tag. No tag in sight. Then the spoiler pointed us 30m away from the coords of WP0... and we found the tag.
So you park at WP0 but you serach the tag of WP0 at the main coords. meh... ok.

Edith already walked down the little allee towards "nature" and I followed while doing the math.
Oops... wrong way, back into the village. Then the walk began thru a housing estate, the first WP was quickly found and the next WP was ... 30meters down the road? meh... ok. It will be good soon, just need to get out of the village first.

"O look. a small path into the meadows."... nope, into the housing estate we march and that's how the walk continues, thru housing estates and unacttractive villages along roads with no footpaths.
The hiding spots are all out in the open, we got muggles at every location, bad luck. Its a factor in caching.
EVERY decimal for EACH coordinate has to be "calculated". meh ... ok.
Found all the points, calculated the longest final formula we have ever done so far. And then ended up in a plantation -.- and the hint... hu?
Checked the data found, recalculated all the data, derived all the numbers for A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R and S (that's for a 4km walk!!) didnt need to recalculate Z as it wasnt used in the final formula...
all seem correct. Recalculated the final coords with the same result.

Back to the car. Bugger this. I would have liked to find it because a bad review in a DNF log doesnt have the same value as a bad review in a Found it log.

In the meanwhile I have contacted the hiders and have spotted MY mistake for the data : klinkers vs medeklinkers.I should pay more attention.


To brighten up the day (by now we are all annoyed) I suggested to search the nearest traditional.
On the top of the list was a trad by the same hiders but in the description it read "speelplein in een wijk"(playground on a housing estate)... meh, not doing that one.
So the other nearest by is an impressive chapel, drove up to the chapel... right samck in the middle of the village on a crossroads with a busstop at 50m. Again, bugger this.

Tossed the print outs on the back seat and headed home.
Didn't find it 2/25/2009 Guinness70 couldn't find Save a little Prayer 3 (Traditional Cache) Limburg [visit log]
Didn't find it 2/25/2009 Guinness70 couldn't find Mooshoek (Multi-cache) Limburg [visit log]

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Grotje van Nerem

Today I felt like a brisk walk without too much hassle and also wanted to cache. I decided to do Grotje van Nerem, which is a very short multi (120m) but I parked my car at the start of my multi Kevie 1 : Grootmeers and started the walk there, with Jack (dog).

After 4,x km I arrived at WP1, gathered the (wrong) info and did the math... the arrow was pointing me to the middle of the enclosed meadow. NOT RIGHT. Redid the math... nope still wrong.
Continued the search with the spoiler and some commoon sense and that lead me right to the cache. Very sturdy construction and well camouflaged!

Then continued on the trail, thru Sluizen and picked up the bycicle route back to Nerem and Tongeren, a quick check of my Kevie2 traditional and back to the car we had walked 9.5km.
Just what the doctor ordered ;-)

At home I checked the data... DOH! my mistake on the northern coordinate. As for the eastern coordinate erosion and moss confused me which lead to me picking the wrong initial -.- , its an M not an H.

Found it 2/21/2009 Guinness70 found Het grotje van Nerem. (Multi-cache) Limburg

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Heli Wing does GeoCrime

Today there was a geocaching/GPS initiation organised by the sportssection from the base i work at. The organisor asked for a good cache, not too far from the base, with a nice nature walk and something extra. We decided on Geocrime which has all of those features.

Pitty it was raining but we had a lot of fun, some enjoyed it so much they will be registering on GC soon.

Afterwards some wanted to do some more caches and we headed out to some local traditionals.
-

Found it 2/17/2009 Guinness70 found Tussen de boomgaarden (Traditional Cache) Limburg [visit log]
Dropped off 2/17/2009 Guinness70 placed TB AC/DC black ice (Travel Bug Dog Tag) in De TB Pauze E313 Exit32 Limburg [visit log]
Dropped off 2/17/2009 Guinness70 placed Little Fireman Steve (Travel Bug Dog Tag) in De TB Pauze E313 Exit32 Limburg [visit log]
Write note 2/17/2009 Guinness70 posted a note for Geocaching - All In One coin (DRunners Geocaching - All In One Geocoin)
[visit log]
Discovered it 2/17/2009 Guinness70 discovered "Käki" (Travel Bug Dog Tag)
[visit log]
Discovered it 2/17/2009 Guinness70 discovered Hippos (Travel Bug Dog Tag)
[visit log]
Discovered it 2/17/2009 Guinness70 discovered Travelduck (Travel Bug Dog Tag)
[visit log]
Discovered it 2/17/2009 Guinness70 discovered the Dutch travel-duck (Travel Bug Dog Tag)
[visit log]
Write note 2/17/2009 Guinness70 posted a note for De TB Pauze E313 Exit32 (Traditional Cache) Limburg [visit log]

Sunday, February 08, 2009

nature care... my arse! money makers!


Is this taking care of nature? The annual cutting hasnt been as aggressive as this year, oil prices have anything to do with it?

Two of my caches have been "disturbed" by the "green workers". Another cacher jvdm1632 sent in some pictures of the current situation at Wilderpark Drieling . Luckly during the recon of the park I took some pictures of the same location from the same angle.

So a large part of a beautyfull little park has been reduced to a pile of dirt and wood debri. I'm no tree-surgeon, so if anyone could tell me this is all for the greater good... let's hear it.





jvdm1632 sent me a link to the news site... guess what, the town of Bilzen (owner of the park) is selling firewood ... golly.

translated:
BILZEN : At the Wilderpark some (some?) trees have been cut and with this cutting lots of crownwood has come available. The council has decided to put it up for sale as firewood.
From tuesday january 27th, interested parties can place their bid.

More info on 089-51.92.60. (ksg)



Brandhout - 22/01/2009

BILZEN - In het Wilderpark worden populieren gekapt. Daarbij komt heel wat kroonhout vrij. Het stadsbestuur heeft besloten om het te verkopen als brandhout.

Vanaf dinsdag 27januari kunnen geïnteresseerden een bod uitbrengen op het hout.

Meer info: 089-51.92.60. (ksg)

www.geleidehond.be

www.geleidehond.be
Today we went on a sponsorwalk for guidedogs for the blind. Dirk, myself and the dogs did 16km (6kmh) and the girls did 10km. Nice, brisk walk starting in Koninksem and we walked passed several old farmhouses and a few castles. We all enjoyed it.

Plenty of dogs signed up for the walk :-)

Air support for GeoCrime

On february the 17th the sports section of the Heli Wing is organizing a caching initiation and after the "theoretical" part there is a multi to do. The organizer asked me to either hide a new one, but that was too short notice because our schedules didnt sync, I suggested to go for an excisting one. This would have to have all the elements a good multi could have : scenery, average length walk, interesting setup, not too difficult and not too far from base.
Immediately Geocrime by Gilliske en Jenfosch (GC1E8GR) popped up in my head, its got all of that :-)
In preparation Patrick and myself met up outside the cemetry yestrerday and he did the multi with me tagging along as backup (I already did this one). Patrick is the Survival isntructor at the base, needles to say it was a very intersting conversation all along the walk, I was all ears.
And no surprise of course : the multi gets the thumbs up. During the morning of the 17th of february it will be busy at GeoCrime.

I'm amazed how well the Etrex Vista performed ... in combination with Patrick's eye for "that doesnt look natural", the witnesses came forward real easy.

Monday, February 02, 2009

Cat-in-the-Hat part 3

When we got home on friday a package had been left on the doorstep... from Phil aka Cat-in-the-hat, a friend from Long Island, NY who was on a buisness trip and we went caching for a day.

In the package were 2 lanyards from USAF -United States Air Force, I'm in the belgian air force), that's going to produce some envious looks :-) and one extra-ordinary geocoin.
Not only is it a large coin, but ... well... I need a manual.
Have a look at the picture.

What a surprise :-) Thanks Phil


Found the manual. It's a nighttime clock, a tool used by marinners a long long time ago! Amazing!
On that site you can find more of those old, navigation tools but then in smaller size. The forerunners of the GPS.

Sunday, February 01, 2009

Nightcaching after hours

Last week was spent in the Ardens and during the evening we went nightcaching, Jean-Luc (created an account as astrodjill) and Thierry got their caching initiation.
Nightcaching in the woods is fun :-) , tricky/risky but fun nevertheless.

Château le Duc and Châteua des Fées are amazing! The scenery and views are WOW, even in the dark you just know it must be impressive in the daylight.

And today -after Nadal beat Federer in the Australian Open- my wife and I finally set out for another multi which had been getting good reviews : "Le Chemin des Houilleux", the walk was great, the waypoints were easy the scenery was brilliant and very diverse! An excellent experience, sadly it was getting dark when we left the last waypoint and I must have made a mistake somewhere. The darkness and the chilling wind wasnt helping the concentration so we called it off. May or may not come back to log but we enjoyed the walk A LOT !

Didn't find it 2/1/2009 Guinness70 couldn't find Le chemin des Houilleux (Multi-cache) Liège [visit log]
Found it 1/29/2009 Guinness70 found Château-le-Duc (Traditional Cache) Luxembourg [visit log]
Found it 1/28/2009 Guinness70 found Mirador 535 (Traditional Cache) Luxembourg [visit log]
Found it 1/28/2009 Guinness70 found Le Mirador (Traditional Cache) Luxembourg [visit log]
Found it 1/28/2009 Guinness70 found Goutelle des Corbeaux GCB Event 2008 (Traditional Cache) Luxembourg [visit log]
Retrieve it from a cache 1/27/2009 Guinness70 retrieved TB AC/DC black ice (Travel Bug Dog Tag) from Goutelle des Corbeaux GCB Event 2008 Luxembourg [visit log]
Found it 1/27/2009 Guinness70 found Le Château des Fées (Traditional Cache) Luxembourg [visit log]
Found it 1/27/2009 Guinness70 found Vallée des Ponts 6 GCB Event 2008 (Traditional Cache) Luxembourg [visit log]
Didn't find it 1/27/2009 Guinness70 couldn't find Vallée des Ponts 4 GCB Event 2008 (Traditional Cache) Luxembourg [visit log]
Found it 1/27/2009 Guinness70 found Vallée des Ponts 7 GCB Event 2008 (Traditional Cache) Luxembourg [visit log]
Didn't find it 1/27/2009 Guinness70 couldn't find Vallée des Ponts 1 GCB Event 2008 (Traditional Cache) Luxembourg [visit log]
Found it 1/27/2009 Guinness70 found Vallée des Ponts 2 GCB Event 2008 (Traditional Cache) Luxembourg [visit log]